The Army wants you … to express yourself?

As anybody in the acquisitions community knows, the Army is awash in bureaucracy.

Decision-making can seem like a tortured affair. Between most soldiers and the upper echelons, there are a lot of people, a lot of levels.

This morning the new chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Martin Dempsey, busted out the social-media era’s version of the suggestion box: his Facebook page. He wants to know what you think the Army’s got going for it, and against it.

Though Dempsey’s been rapped for his poor use of Twitter, this move seems to signal that the new chief is an open guy who’s not afraid to flatten some of the barriers between himself and his troops — and have conversations in new, more public, media.

This may be what you’d expect from the former head of the Army’s think-tank, Training and Doctrine Command. There, Dempsey was known for vetting ideas in blog posts. More recently, TRADOC spearheaded a massive troop survey that’s encapsulated by Dempsey’s Facebook post: What are the Army’s strengths and weaknesses?